Many modern gas turbine engines are controlled by a highly integrated dual channel engine-mounted engine controller, such as a Full Authority Digital Electronic Controls (FADEC). The FADEC implements a highly centralized and specialized design. The FADEC generally hosts all the needed interfaces with the aircraft and nacelle systems, and is configured to perform virtually all the engine control functions.
In contrast to the centralized approach of the FADEC, engine control architectures have been designed in which the functionality is more distributed around the engine to smart sensors and smart actuators. The intent of these alternative architectures is to reduce overall system weight by, for example, using fewer cables, to reduce the functionality within the FADEC for reduced weight and increased reliability, and to improve life cycle costs due to improved fault diagnostics.
Although safe, reliable, and robust, these alternative architectures do exhibit certain drawbacks. For example, these approaches can be limited in practicality because of the higher procurement costs of potentially specialized electronics or packaging that may be needed to survive the high temperature environments associated with an engine, and/or because of the overall increase in functional overhead to support a distributed controls network due, for example, to the use of many distributed smart nodes.
Hence, there is a need for a distributed engine control architecture that does not suffer the drawbacks of current FADECs and presently known alternative architectures.